The present invention relates to hepatitis A virus and, more particularly, for a method for growing hepatitis A virus in cell culture.
Prior art attempts to propagate hepatitis A virus in cell culture uniformly have been unsuccessful. The inability to propagate the virus in cell culture has necessitated the use of susceptible sub-human primates to grow the virus so as to obtain antigen for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. The scarcity and cost of most susceptible sub-human primates, however, renders such methods impractical for commercial use. The ability to propagate hepatitis A virus in cell culture would offer a signficant and outstanding achievement in this field.